Mina Song

  • Public work by Nakyeng Hwang.
  • Public work by Veronika Neukirch.
  • Public work by Laura Robertson.

Design Trust and the Royal College of Art are delighted to announce Mina Song as the 2017 Design Trust/ Royal College of Art Fellowship in Design Curation.

Design Trust and the Royal College of Art are delighted to announce Mina Song as the 2017 Design Trust/ Royal College of Art Fellowship in Design Curation.

As the inaugural Design Trust/ Royal College of Art Fellow in Design Curation, Mina will join the RCA for twelve months, where she will focus on acquiring curatorial strategies that bring designers and design methods into public art frameworks in Hong Kong, as part of a toolkit for cultural commissioning in the public realm. The Fellowship addresses the burgeoning field of design curating in a global context, and its place within the interdisciplinary curatorial field, such as the growth of new institutions devoted to design, the presence of design in art museums, biennale and cultural festivals and other new platforms for public engagement with design including new urban development.

At the Royal College of Art, Mina will have the opportunity to engage in advanced research into curatorial contexts for contemporary design practice and recent design history, as well as to develop new thinking in curatorial practice and theory aligned with the social and cultural contexts for design. With the support of subject specialists at the RCA, she will devise and develop an original research project related to design in Asia and its global contexts.

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2017
Fellow: Mina Song

Mina Song was educated as a visual designer and holds degrees from Seoul National University, Hong Kong Polytechnic University and the Chinese University of Hong Kong. She practised professionally in the design field before moving into cultural administration for community arts organisations in Hong Kong. Mina worked for the Hong Kong Arts Centre and Community Art Network, where she contributed to the multi-year Art@Government Buildings project, which commissioned artworks for installation in public buildings in Hong Kong.

Organisation: Royal College of Art

The Royal College of Art is widely recognised as an international leader in the fields of curating and history of design. Established for over 25 years, the College’s Curating Contemporary Art programme offers collaborative project-based experiences and learning that integrate theory and practice. The V&A/RCA History of Design programme teaches and researches cultural, social, economic, political and technological history through artefacts and our interactions with them. Projects and expertise range across global geographies, from the fifteenth century to the contemporary, and draw on cognate areas such as geography, performance studies and design practice. The Fellow will have access to RCA’s world-leading teaching, staff expertise and networks throughout the 12-month programme. For more information please visit: https://www.rca.ac.uk/ .

Project Progress: White [City] Cube

Mina Song presented “White [City] Cube”as part of her year-long fellowship, at White City Place in London, from 1st November to 8th November 2018.

This public exhibition applied findings from Mina’s research undertaken during the Fellowship into design tactics for curatorial practice. Work from four participating creators invited the public community to examine space in a different perspective. Asking the audience how they would react to a slight change to their everyday path to their destination and, rethink how signage could provoke an alternative response?

From the various design theories and tactics explored, the exhibition applies Carl Disalvo’s concept of “adversarial design theory” to the exhibition-making process. Incorporating designer and theorist Victor Papanek’s concept that everyone is a designer, Mina experimented with the roles of different and observed them during the curatorial process. Papanek’s concept offers a method for the reinterpretation and re-examination of how curating can be done, and for exploring how design is adaptable to curatorial practices.

Public work by Inge van Genuchten.

Project Result: Design Trust/ RCA Design Curation Public Lecture 2019

Date: 24 April 2019 (Wednesday)

Time: 6pm – 8pm

Venue: Miller Theatre, Asia Society Hong Kong Center, 9 Justice Drive, Admiralty, Hong Kong

Speakers:

Mina Song (2017 Design Trust / RCA Fellow)

Sunnie Chan (2018 Design Trust / RCA Fellow)

Co-moderators:

Marisa Yiu (Co-founder and Executive Director, Design Trust)

Doryun Chong (Deputy Director, Curatorial and Chief Curator, M+, West Kowloon Cultural District)

Addressing the burgeoning field of design curating in Hong Kong and the Greater Bay Area region in a global context, DESIGN TRUST / RCA FELLOWSHIP IN DESIGN CURATION provides advanced research into curatorial practice in relation to contemporary design and recent design history. Returned from the Royal College of Art in London, Fellows Mina Song and Sunnie Chan will present their research exploring curatorial practice and theory in relation to existing and emergent design disciplines, and its place within the interdisciplinary curatorial field.

More details about Design Trust/ RCA Design Curation Public Lecture 2019 here